Monday, August 12, 2013

An article that touches on some of the cultural influences that have
shaped the Brazilian style of soccer reminds me a little of Ayn Rand's 1972
"Open Letter to Boris Spassky", in which she argues that the Russian chess
master was using the game as an escape from the conditions of his totalitarian
society.

This she did by means of a series of questions, such as:

Would you be able to play if you had to play by
teamwork--i.e., if you were forbidden to think or act alone and had to
play not with a group of advisers, but with a team that determined your every
move by vote? Since, as champion, you would be the best mind among them, how
much time and effort would you have to spend persuading the team that your
strategy is the best? Would you be likely to succeed? And what would you do if
some pragmatist, range-of-the-moment mentalities voted to grab an opponent's
knight at the price of a checkmate to you three moves later? You would not be
able to continue? Yet in the living world, this is the theoretical ideal of
your country, and this is the method by which it proposes to deal (someday)
with scientific research, industrial production, and every other kind of
activity required for man's survival. (The Ayn Rand Letter, Vol. 1,
No. 25)

Later, she makes the following point:

If--for any number of reasons, psychological or
existential--a man comes to believe that the living world is closed to
him, that he has nothing to seek or to achieve, that no action is possible,
then chess becomes his antidote, the means of drugging his own rebellious mind
that refuses fully to believe it and to stand still. This, Comrade, is the
reason why chess has always been so popular in your country, before and since
its present regime--and why there have not been many American masters. You
see, in this country, men are still free to act. (Ibid.)

Most reminiscent of Rand's piece was this bit about how racial segregation and a "semi-feudal" social structure affected the game.

... When soccer first took hold, teams were racially segregated
and, if a black player ever made contact with a white player - no matter the
circumstances - he would be immediately penalized. And so Afro-Brazilian
players developed techniques where through feints, shimmies, and extreme
control, it was possible to fluidly move past a white opponent without ever
making physical contact.

...

What's more, it could
be that Brazil's emphasis on individual tricks actually embodies a fantasy of
social equality in a society which has traditionally been anything but: "[I]n a
semi-feudal setting, football is a powerful mechanism for subverting
traditional hierarchies," Tim Vickery writes, "And when [a player] does a little shimmy and an opponent clumsily falls to
the ground, the roar from the crowd can be almost as loud as a goal. Even if
the opponent is quickly back on his feet and doggedly performing his marking
duties, he has been publicly humiliated for that split second -- a hugely
significant moment."

Unfortunately, despite the author's perspicacity regarding soccer as a
psychological outlet, the similarity ends there. In particular, he uses the
term "equality" ambiguously to mean both (1) equality before the law, as the
term usually meant early in United States history, and (2) equality of outcome
(which can only be achieved by a government improperly coercing it), as
altruist/collectivist egalitarians
use it today in the U.S. and Brazil. (This ambiguity also shows up in his
regard of "inequality", regardless of how it arises (e.g., feudalistically or
by merit) as bad.)

Seeing Brazil's recent unrest as having a "noble
goal" -- a
perspective I do not share -- he mistakenly believes that it reflects a
fundamental cultural change. He correctly sees that conformity would kill
Brazil's style of play if imposed, say, by a coach. However, the author fails
to realize that, should Brazil's "revolution" achieve success, it will have the
opposite effect on the national level: Whatever opportunities there are under
whatever modicum of capitalism there is in Brazil will disappear, and soccer
will, like chess, represent one of the few ways men will have to display
creativity and innovation.

I don't think Brazil's style of play is
in any danger from its "revolution". Sadly, life entails much more than a game
played on a rectangle of grass.